Lanskell’s washing. Dr. Lanskell, the chief medical practitioner of the day, was presumably versed in the secret history of every household from the Battery to Union Square; but, though beset by inquisitive patients, he had invariably declared himself unable to identify Jessamine’s “veiled lady,” or to hazard a guess as to the origin of the hundred dollar bill pinned to the baby’s bib.

            The hundred dollars were never renewed, the lady never reappeared, but the baby lived healthily and happily with Jessamine’s piccaninnies, and as soon as it could toddle was brought to Chatty Lovell’s day-nursery, where it appeared (like its fellow paupers) in little garments cut down from her old dresses, and socks knitted by her untiring hands. Delia, absorbed in her own babies, had nevertheless dropped in once or twice at the nursery, and had come away wishing that Chatty’s maternal instinct might find its normal outlet in marriage. The married cousin confusedly felt that her own affection for her handsome children was a mild and measured sentiment compared with Chatty’s fierce passion for the waifs in Grandmamma Lovell’s stable.

            And then, to the general surprise, Charlotte Lovell engaged herself to Joe Ralston. It was known that Joe had “admired her” the year she came out. She was a graceful dancer, and Joe, who was tall and nimble, had footed it with her through many a reel and schottische. By the end of the winter all the match-makers were predicting that something would come of it; but when Delia sounded her cousin, the girl’s evasive answer and burning brow seemed to imply that her suitor had changed his mind, and no further questions could be asked. Now it was clear that there had, in fact, been an old romance between them, probably followed by that exciting incident, a “misunderstanding”; but at last all was well, and the bells of St. Mark’s were preparing to ring in happier days for Charlotte. “Ah, when she has her first baby,” the Ralston mothers chorused…

            “Chatty!” Delia exclaimed, pushing back her chair as she saw her cousin’s image reflected in the glass over her shoulder.

            Charlotte Lovell had paused in the doorway. “They told me you were here—so I ran up.”

            “Of course, darling. How handsome you do look in your poplin! I always said you needed rich materials. I’m so thankful to see you out of grey cashmere.” Delia, lifting her hands, removed the white bonnet from her dark polished head, and shook it gently to make the crystals glitter.

            “I hope you like it? It’s for your wedding,” she laughed.

            Charlotte Lovell stood motionless. In her mother’s old dove-coloured poplin, freshly banded with narrow rows of crimson velvet ribbon, an ermine tippet crossed on her bosom, and a new beaver bonnet with a falling feather, she had already something of the assurance and majesty of a married woman.

            “And you know your hair certainly is darker, darling,” Delia added, still hopefully surveying her.

            “Darker? It’s grey,” Charlotte suddenly broke out in her deep voice. She pushed back one of the pommaded bands that framed her face, and showed a white lock on her temple. “You needn’t save up your bonnet; I’m not going to be married,” she added, with a smile that showed her small white teeth in a fleeting glare.

            Delia had just enough presence of mind to lay down the bonnet, marabout-up, before she flung herself on her cousin.

            “Not going to be married? Charlotte, are you perfectly crazy?”

            “Why is it crazy to do what I think right?”

            “But people said you were going to marry him the year you came out. And no one understood what happened then. And now—how can it possibly be right? You simply can’t!” Delia incoherently cried.

            “Oh—people!” said Charlotte Lovell wearily.

            Her married cousin looked at her with a start. Something thrilled in her voice that Delia had never heard in it, or in any other human voice, before. Its echo seemed to set their familiar world rocking, and the Axminster carpet actually heaved under Delia’s shrinking slippers.

            Charlotte Lovell stood staring ahead of her with strained lids. In the pale brown of her eyes Delia noticed the green specks that floated there when she was angry or excited.

            “Charlotte—where on earth have you come from?” she questioned, drawing the girl down to the sofa.

            “Come from?”

            “Yes. You look as if you had seen a ghost—an army of ghosts.”

            The same snarling smile drew up Charlotte’s lip. “I’ve seen Joe,” she said.

            “Well?—Oh Chatty,” Delia exclaimed, abruptly illuminated, “you don’t mean to say that you’re going to let any little thing in Joe’s past—? Not that I’ve ever heard the least hint; never. But even if there were…” She drew a deep breath, and bravely proceeded to extremities. “Even if you’ve heard that he’s been…that he’s had a child—of course he would have provided for it before…”

            The girl shook her head. “I know: you needn’t go on. ‘Men will be men’; but it’s not that.”

            “Tell me what it is.”

            Charlotte Lovell looked about the sunny prosperous room as if it were the image of her world, and that world were a prison she must break out of. She lowered her head. “I want—to get away,” she panted.

            “Get away? From Joe?”

            “From his ideas—the Ralston ideas.”

            Delia bridled—after all, she was a Ralston! “The Ralston ideas? I haven’t found them—so unbearably unpleasant to live with,” she smiled a little tartly.

            “No. But it was different with you: they didn’t ask you to give up things.”

            “What things?” What in the world (Delia wondered) had poor Charlotte that any one would want her to give up? She had always been in the position of taking rather than of having to surrender.

            “Can’t you explain to me, dear,” Delia urged.

            “My poor children—he says I’m to give them up,” cried the girl in a stricken whisper.

            “Give them up? Give up helping them?”

            “Seeing them—looking after them. Give them up altogether. He got his mother to explain to me. After—after we have children…he’s afraid…afraid our children might catch things…He’ll give me money, of course, to pay some one…a hired person, to look after them. He thought that handsome,” Charlotte broke out with a sob.